The Dragon's Price

by Bethany Wiggins

  There is a sudden physical shifting inside of me, as if I have lived my whole life half-blind, and now, for the first time, I can truly see. My body, my muscles, my bones, and my head blend into one perfect, highly functioning entity. I know how to do this—this fighting. My physical weakness is my only flaw. I growl and thrust my staff up. The flail hits my weapon and clangs against it; then the chain attached to the metal loops once around the staff. I yank on my staff and thrust my foot into my opponent’s stomach. The flail is stripped from his hand. He falls to his back, and I press my staff to his throat. Glaring up at me, he waits to die, but I freeze. I cannot kill him. I do not want his knowledge contaminating my brain. Enzio springs to my side and drives his short sword into the mercenary’s chest.

  Before I can thank him, a blood-painted mercenary swings a sword at my neck. My body responds before I have time to think, thrusting my staff between me and the sword. Enzio rams his shoulder into the mercenary’s ribs, slamming him to the ground, and quickly kills him.

  A third man charges me, slicing at the air with two short, curved swords in either of his hands. I duck and parry just as one of his swords touches the side of my cheek. I thrust my staff into the man’s stomach, and as he stumbles back, an arrow pierces his chest. Turning, I see Evay behind me. She nocks another arrow to her bowstring and fires again, killing the man with the two swords. I nod my thanks, but she turns away without acknowledging it.

  A horn blares, the very same as started the battle. Far ahead, I see Golmarr raise his sword into the afternoon sunshine. A man and woman on horseback approach Golmarr and stop at his side. It is Ingvar and Jayah, his wife. “Where is your leader?” Ingvar bellows.

  The fighting slows and then stops. A long moment passes before a massive man steps up to Ingvar. “We answer to no leader,” the man says. “We fight for ourselves.”

  Ingvar studies the man. “We are ready to end this battle!” he yells, loud enough that his words carry to every person on the battlefield. “Already we have killed well over half of your leaderless men. If you surrender your weapons to us and go back to the Glass Forest, we will spare your lives. If you do not, every single one of you will be dead within the hour. Go now and live, or choose death. I do not care either way.”

  The mercenary roars and swings his blade at Ingvar’s torso, but Golmarr blocks it and throws the man to the ground, killing him swiftly.

  Another mercenary charges at Golmarr. Golmarr turns around to fight, but Jayah guides her horse between the enemy and her brother-in-law and strikes the mercenary down with her sword.

  “We are always looking for ways to hone our battle skills,” Jayah bellows. “Slaughtering every single one of you would hone not only our battle skills, but also our reputation for being brutal, bloodthirsty barbarians. Who else wants to fight us? Who else wants to die to hone the Antharian reputation?” she bellows, and swings her sword in a figure eight over her head.

  The mercenaries look around. One man throws his sword to the ground and starts running north. Another starts to run, keeping his club and shield with him. An arrow hits him between the shoulder blades before he has taken ten steps, and he falls to the ground.

  “Leave your weapons or die!” Ingvar bellows, lowering his bow.

  One by one, the mercenaries drop their weapons to the ground, turn north, and start running. The few who cling to their weapons are shot down. I stare after them as the people around me cheer and thrust their swords high into the air. We have won, and the dragon has not come. It seems too easy. An arm comes around me, squeezing my shoulders, and I look into the smiling face of Enzio.

  Before me, the crowd parts. Golmarr is striding through the tall grass, his skin shiny with sweat, his eyes locked on mine. When he reaches me, he grabs my face with both hands and stares into my eyes. His thumb gently wipes the blood from the wound on my cheek, and then he leans in and kisses me with the fierceness of battle. The world seems to spin, and I grab his chain mail to keep from falling. He pulls away. “We won.” He smiles. “We won, and the glass dragon never came, and tonight you will be my wife!”

  I laugh and throw my arms around his neck, and he swings me off the ground.

  “But first, we need to burn the dead mercenaries and gather our own fallen to take home.” Golmarr puts me back on the ground. Already, men and women are piling up wood from a wagon that followed us into battle. Other men are flattening the grass around the wood so the fire won’t spread. Some of the horses are being used to drag dead mercenaries over to the fire. The horse clan’s dead and injured are lifted into the wagon that once carried the wood. There are three dead, and five too injured to ride home.

  Ingvar guides his horse over to us. “Well fought, brother,” he says, holding his hand down to Golmarr. They clasp wrists and Ingvar smiles. When he smiles, he doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as I first thought, even wearing full armor. Turning his attention to me, he holds his hand out and I clasp his wrist, like Golmarr did. “Well fought, Suicide Sorrow; well fought, indeed.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I stand in the field and watch Golmarr help carry mercenary bodies to the edge of the fire. When it is blazing, the dead are thrown onto it. The smoke blackens and makes a dark, inky trail against the turquoise sky. I watch it rise, and when my head is tilted back and my gaze is straight up, I see it: a tiny, dark speck. My knees knock together and tears fill my eyes as all of the energy of victory is stripped from me. I shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut, hoping that when I open them, the dark speck will be gone. But it is not. “Dragon!” I try to shout the word, but it comes out as a choked whisper.

  I reach out and grab the nearest person and point straight up. Enzio shades his eyes and looks to where I am pointing. “What is that?”

  “The dragon has come for me,” I whisper.

  “The glass dragon!” Enzio bellows. “Get your cloaks and move out!” Horns bellow and everyone runs. I do not run. I stand still and wait because I already know that no matter where I go, there the dragon will be.

  In three heartbeats the field is clear of every living person but me, Enzio, and Golmarr. Golmarr’s sword is out, gleaming in the sunlight, and he is sprinting toward me. “Do you have it?” he asks Enzio.

  “Yes.” Enzio presses on his chest and I hear paper crinkle.

  “Then clear out with the rest so you don’t die!” Golmarr orders.

  A horse and rider come galloping up to Golmarr and me, and from the saddle, Jessen hands us each a cloak. “Are you sure you don’t want us to fight with you, brother?” he asks Golmarr.

  “Your weapons will make no difference, and you know it. You will die if you try to fight it. But…” He grabs Jessen’s arm. “If I die, take up my sword and protect her.”

  “You know I will,” Jessen says, his eyes smoldering as he glances at me. Looking back to his brother, he gives the hand signal for honored warrior.

  I put a deep blue cloak on, clasp it at my neck, and pull the hood up over my head. Golmarr swings a bright saffron cloak over his shoulders but does not put the hood up. We stand side by side in the battle-flattened, blood-splattered grass and stare up at the sky, at the circling black speck that is slowly getting closer and closer, bigger and bigger. When it is so close that I can see its deep green scales, a shower of arrows streaks across the sky. They hit the great beast and bounce off her gleaming scales, raining down on Golmarr and me. One hits my arm and slices my skin just below the elbow before bouncing on the grass at my feet.

  “Hold your fire,” Golmarr bellows. Turning to me, he says, “You remember our plan?”

  “Of course I do. I am ready to distract the beast,” I say, when in reality, I am ready to do no such thing. I grip my staff as tightly as I can. “Just don’t kill her.”

  Golmarr’s nostrils flare and his jaw muscles tighten. “I will do my best to protect you, Sorrowlynn. This I swear.”

  The beast completes one last, lazy circle through the air and then dives at us, her massive bla
ck claws tearing through the ground and digging deep fissures in the dirt and grass. Before she settles to a stop, Golmarr lifts his sword and starts sprinting toward her. As the dragon opens her massive jaws to catch the horse lord up in her yellow teeth, Golmarr dives under the great beast’s chin, stopping between her feet. He swings his blade with the skill and perfection of a practiced dragon slayer. The reforged blade carves through the scales on the back of the dragon’s ankle. The beast shrieks as great drops of blood splatter the ground beneath her foot. I blink and stare at the limping beast. Golmarr has severed her hamstring, making it impossible for the creature to run. And then I realize something I should have known the first time I watched him fight. Because of Golmarr’s birth prediction, that he would be the first dragon slayer in his family, he has been training for and thinking about killing dragons his entire life. He has been practicing for this moment since the day he was born. I am witnessing his destiny.

  Golmarr leaps to his feet and grabs a dragon scale, pulling himself up onto the creature’s wounded leg. Grabbing another scale higher up the beast’s side, he swings onto her wide back. He falls to his knees and stabs his sword into the base of one of the leathery black wings just as the dragon lifts her spiked tail and swings. Golmarr tries to duck, but the blunt side of the tail hits his shoulder, flinging him through the air. He thumps onto the ground and rolls to a stop. Slowly, he climbs to his hands and knees and shakes his head.

  “Golmarr?” I call. He doesn’t move.

  The dragon looks at the horse lord and takes a step toward him. Fear turns my stomach and fills me with adrenaline. If I don’t do something, the beast will eat Golmarr. “Your quarrel is with me, Corritha! If you don’t kill me now, I will shout your secret for all to hear,” I shriek, and for the first time I look at the gently sloping hill behind me. It is dark with spectators; the horse clan warriors are silently watching.

  The dragon steps away from Golmarr, opens her good wing, and tries to fly, but the injured wing whips around erratically, splattering the ground with blood, and the creature flails and wobbles. Pulling back her head, she opens her mouth and hisses pale, misty breath at me. I fall to the ground and pull my cloak tight over my body as her breath presses against the blue wool. Frigid air seeps through the fabric, but it doesn’t stiffen into a sheet of ice like it did in the forest. When the chill has passed, I sit up. A thin layer of white frost has dusted my cloak; nothing more. “The mist,” I whisper, thinking of the dense fog that hides the forest floor. It is dragon-made. Without it, the dragon has freezing breath only—not the ability to encase things in ice. And that is when I see the first tendrils of white seep between the grass and curl around my knees. I stand and back away from it, but it is growing, rising up from the ground and swirling around my legs.

  Golmarr, still on his hands and knees, is almost entirely surrounded by mist. Only his head rises above it. I grip my staff in my hands and run toward him, making the mist dance and swirl away from me. When I reach him, he looks up. His skin is ashen and beaded with sweat. “My head,” he mumbles. “It’s been hit one too many times.” Slowly, he gets to his feet.

  “The mist turns into glass,” I blurt. “Without the mist, nothing will freeze. We have to stop the mist!”

  “How?” Golmarr asks.

  The answer comes to me, just like it did before: fire. I look across the field, to the smoldering and smoking bodies, and I want that fire. I want it to warm me, to feed me, to take the icy chill out of my hands that has been there for days. I need that fire. A single spark bounces out of the smoldering pile and lands on the grass, rising up to a small flame. And then, like a narrow stream of water, the fire trickles its way toward me through the grass—a perfectly straight line of orange. Everywhere the fire touches, the mist turns to steam and evaporates.

  “Sorrowlynn?” Golmarr says, backing away as the fire starts licking the hem of my pants. I bend down and thrust my hands into the bright orange flames. The fire flares around them and wraps itself over my entire body. I stand and the fire clings to me, so everything I see has turned orange, for I am seeing it through flames. My clothes fill with warmth and heat seeps into my skin. Energy enters my flesh and soaks into my blood. With every beat of my heart, warmth pulses through my body, feeding me more perfectly than any food I have ever eaten.

  A dense weight slams into my back, and I am thrown to the ground. Golmarr is atop me, smothering the flames with his cloak, but when he pulls away, my clothes and flesh are unmarked. “That didn’t burn you,” he whispers.

  I open and close my warm hands and look at him in wonder. “It fed me.”

  Golmarr helps me to my feet and readies himself to fight the dragon again.

  Fire might protect you, but ice will still kill him. I assure you, his death will be more painful to you than anything else I could do, the dragon says, her voice soft and lilting in my head. I look at Golmarr and the mist swirling around his feet in the exact moment the glass dragon blasts her breath at him. Without thinking, without understanding how, I thrust up a tall wall of flames between Golmarr and the dragon. When Corritha’s breath hits it, the fire billows and scatters like gold stars and then re-forms into a wall. The white breath turns to pale wisps of steam that disappear against the sky. The dragon blows another blast of freezing air and tries to scatter the fire, but it holds. On one side of the fire wall, the golden grass is encased in solid, immovable ice. On the other side, the grass ripples in the wind; there isn’t so much as a speck of frost on it.

  A wave of hatred shudders through my body. You think you have won this battle simply because you have used Zhun’s magic to shield my breath, but you are no match for my strength, little girl, the dragon says. Her great, spiked tail sails through the air, and for a moment the memory of the fire dragon’s tail crushing my ribs makes my knees tremble. Clutching my staff to my chest, I dive forward and roll onto slick, frigid ice just as the tail soars over my head. The dragon swings her tail again, and I dig my staff into the ice, trying to move out of the way. Her tail collides with my hip, and I slide across the frozen ground. Before I can get up, a massive foot lowers over my body, its claws shattering the ice I am lying on, but stops before it crushes me. Slowly, one tiny bit at a time, the pressure increases. I swing my staff at the creature’s hind leg—at the bloody gash made by Golmarr—but it merely bounces off the green scales.

  Every knight in shining armor feels it is his duty to save a helpless maiden, Corritha says. You are my bait. I know the hearts of men well enough to know that the noble ones will risk their lives to do what they think is right. If he is noble, he will come and try to save you, and then I will have the pleasure of freezing him and eating him before your very eyes. If he is not noble, I will slowly crush you. A forked tongue darts out of the dragon’s mouth and touches my face. And then I will eat you, and he will be eaten up with guilt until the day he dies. The pressure on my body increases until I feel my ribs start to bend inward, and I cannot breathe.

  From the corner of my eye, I see Golmarr in his bright cloak start sprinting toward the dragon. As the dragon draws in a massive breath of air, the mist hovering on the ground is sucked toward her mouth.

  “Stop,” I try to shriek to Golmarr, but I cannot get enough breath into my lungs. Golmarr runs faster, and the dragon’s mouth is opening. Reaching toward the fire still hovering in a straight line along the grass, I pull it to me and throw it in the dragon’s gaping mouth just as a blur of blinding vermilion streaks over my head and onto the dragon’s leg. Golmarr lifts the reforged sword and plunges it into the dragon’s side, all the way to the hilt. The moment the sword pierces through the scales, the pressure pinning me to the ground eases. Golmarr pulls his sword out and thrusts it into the great beast again. The reforged metal cuts through the dragon’s inky green scales like they are great drops of water. The talon lifts off my body and the dragon hisses as she tries to snap Golmarr from her back, but he ducks and thrusts again, plunging his sword into the space where the dragon�
�s neck meets her body, and then yanks it free. Slowly, the dragon tips to her side and lands beside me with shattering force. Shards of ice explode around the creature’s body, creating a cloud that shimmers like diamonds in the sunlight and pierces my skin.

  Golmarr pulls me to my feet and wraps his left arm around my waist, dragging me away from the dragon, his sword still poised to strike. But the great beast merely watches us while her huge chest slowly rises up and down. Blood is pouring out of the three sword wounds, making a growing pool of red around the dragon’s body.

  My eyes meet Golmarr’s. They are tight with pain, and my heart starts to pound with fear. Something is horribly wrong. Tears spill from his eyes and stream down his face, mixing with blood on his left cheek. “How badly are you hurt?” I ask, cupping his cheek in my hand and running my thumb over the cut. It is merely a shallow scrape. “Where are you hurt? Where is this pain coming from?”

  “I’m sorry,” he gasps, and leans his forehead against mine. “I am so sorry, Sorrowlynn.” He grabs my face with his left hand and looks into my eyes. The agony I see there makes me sick, and I wonder if he is about to die.

  I shake my head. “Please don’t die,” I whisper. “Please.”

  “Listen to me,” he says. “No matter what happens, I want you to know that I would have fought by your side until I died. I would have protected you with my own life.” I press my fingers to his mouth to silence him, for every word he speaks tears at my heart and makes it hard to breathe. He clasps my fingers and moves my hand away. “I have to leave.” He steps from me and slowly lets his fingers slide over mine.

  I look from him to the dragon and understanding dawns on me. If the dragon dies from her wounds, her treasure is going to be transferred to Golmarr. He is leaving to protect me. Tears fill my eyes and a sob tears at my chest. “I love you,” I say. He cringes and holds his heart. Turning, he starts striding away, and I stand frozen in place as I watch him go.